Kristy Matheson

Kristy Matheson is an Australian film curator and festival director whose career has been shaped by a passion for connecting audiences with bold, distinctive and international cinema.

She is Artistic Director of BFI Festivals and Festival Director of the BFI London Film Festival, where she leads one of the world’s major celebrations of cinema. She joined the BFI in 2023, taking responsibility for the London Film Festival and BFI Flare, following her tenure as Creative Director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Kristy began her career in the programming department at Brisbane International Film Festival before working in publicity and marketing at Dendy Films and as Industry Manager at Sydney Film Festival. She later joined ACMI, Australia’s national museum of screen culture, progressing through a number of curatorial roles before becoming Director of Film. There she led the museum’s film strategy, programming both contemporary cinema and major retrospectives, and helped develop initiatives including ACMI’s Cinema 3 streaming service.

At the heart of Kristy’s work is a belief in film festivals as places of discovery and connection - spaces where filmmakers, artists and audiences can come together to encounter new ideas, new voices and different ways of seeing the world.